Following on from comedian Jason Byrne’s account of his accident-prone youth in the 1970s and 80s in Memoirs of a Wonky-Eyed Boy, we pick up his story on the cusp of adulthood; he’s fresh out of his Leaving Cert and ready for more haphazard adventures, relying on the idiosyncratic advice of his dad.
Even though I do not have an affinity with Byrne’s type of humour, this book certainly raised a few smiles, perhaps not so much at the stand-up style anecdotes themselves but at the evocative sense of time and place, along with Byrne’s affection and sincerity as he sketches his family life. It’s impossible not to warm to his circle of family and friends, and of course the man himself, his father Paddy Byrne, whose words of wisdom include: “never get involved; sign nothing; never stare at a dog; only part with your money when you have to; eat porridge; trust no one; if you worry you die, if you don’t worry you die anyway, so why worry?”
Punctuated with humorous lists like these, the book revels in nostalgia. No mobile phones meant that in Jason’s house everyone kept their doors open, to facilitate yelling at each other. Then there was the time everyone thought Paddy Byrne had won the lotto because of the tarpaulin draped outside, over a much celebrated and long-awaited extension. We follow Jason from apprenticeship to a collapsed lung to a job he says was the start of his comedy career: working in the warehouse of Lighting Dimensions. There, among many other antics, he and his comrades would regularly gaffer tape unsuspecting victims and throw them in the skip.
It’s an upbeat, lighthearted memoir but that isn’t to say it doesn’t deal with the serious stuff, just that in Byrne’s hands there isn’t a hint of self-absorption, but rather a laugh-a-minute acceptance, and a cherishing not only of his beloved father, but of all the bumps in the road, the funny times, the harum scarum and noise of a full life; and all that makes the moments when the book is genuinely moving all the more touching. For aficionados (a word to which Paddy Byrne may well have replied with his signature “me boll*x”) of Byrne’s stand-up, this will hit all the right spots.
